Search This Blog

On her way to a new home

After 6 wonderful years spent rebuilding and then camping in our wonderful 1956 Shasta, Aguadream, I made the tough decision to sell her earlier this month. We just weren't getting her out enough. I tried renting it out on Outdoorsy, and though there were 5 reservations, all cancelled. I decided this was not the way to go. Thanks to Kelle at Little Vintage Trailer, I found a buyer almost immediately. They've been looking for 3 years, and this was actually the first one that they got to see in person. Later this morning, I'll meet the new owners for a final walkthrough and retrieve all the items that aren't going with her. Thanks for the memories! And thanks to everyone that has supported our journey

Popular posts from this blog

Been working on some more of the final touches in preparation for painting. The door and screen door on my old trailer were really a mess, but I'd been putting off doing anything about them out of some weird psychological blockage that if I took off the door and couldn't fix it I wouldn't be able to camp again. So I had suffered with an exterior door which only closed with a gentle nudge at one corner and a screen door that took so much fighting to open and close that it had been nearly torn apart. So when our July 4th camping trip fell through (not happy about that) I decided to put the time to good use and tackle the doors.

Long story short so far it's been pretty straight forward. Taking apart the doors was easy. I used the old ones as templates and got to work. The aluminum trim was shot so I took them down to the local sheet metal shop to get new ones fabricated. They will be ready sometime next week. I built out the frame and added a new birch interior sk…

I consider myself fortunate to have retained the original dinette bench seats complete with springs. These are very comfortable both to sit on and sleep on but the original vinyl after 56 years was showing it's age. Time for a facelift. Estimates for a custom upholstery job...ran upwards of $700 for both seats--so DIY was definitely in order. Readers of this blog know I had been considering up-cycling vinyl saved from convention signs. I even went so far as to pick out sheets of vinyl. Several factors kept me from proceeding.

Not much experience sewing vinyl and a home sewing machine. Fear that the pattern would have detracted from the overall lookConcern that the ink on the vinyl might bleed upon interaction wtih sunscreen.
So I decided instead to go with Sunbrella fabric (found for $13/yd with free shipping, job required 5 yards) for it's durability, water resistance, UV protection. For my seats I'm using Glacier Blue with a Kiwi Green piping. Very simple, and …

I have been a little obsessed lately with paint. Now that the doors are "almost" done (still need to hang it) I am turning my attention to the most obvious undone aspect of my restoration....exterior paint. There are many options here...most of which have their own sub options.The first decision was DIY or send it out or a combination.Send it OutMaaco $500-800 depending on the amount of prep required.Higher End Resto/Paint shop $2-3K or moreCombinationDo the prep myself-- send it out/hireHire the prep out -- paint it myselfEither of these probably comes out to costing around the price of MaacoDIY-- great resources and discussions at these forums Rolled On or the Vintage Shasta Trailer Forum(VSTF)Rattle Cans--believe it, some very nice paint jobs have been done with rattle cans, this link is to a video by a VSTF member$50 paint job--
with Rustoleum or equivalent Alkyd Enamel roller method http://www.freewebs.com/kc8jwa/painttechniques.htmHVLP sprayer (borrowing spray gu…